by Peter Nichols
pnichols@tellingthetruth.com

WATSONVILLE — On the eve of the Coastal Commission's meeting to determine the fate of the new high school, where you stand regarding the project's controversial issues depends on who and what you believe.

How environmentally sensitive is that land? Is the site safe from airport traffic? Have all safety issues been addressed? Are there really no feasible alternatives? Is that land agriculturally viable? What do people mean when they say ``that land will be developed anyway''? To do the research required to answer these questions is a daunting task.

One thing for certain is the students of Pajaro Valley Unified School District need a new high school. In fact the district has been in desperate need of a new high school for many years and has actively searched for a suitable location for nearly 15 years.

A site was chosen in 1988 on Green Valley Rd. near Pinto Lake. Architectural design work was performed and the state approved the construction.

Had the district purchased that property and built a school there, graduates of that school might now be teachers in the district, doctors and lawyers in the community.

But a neighborhood group known as the Green Valley Action Committee mobilized opposition and killed that plan.

Shelley Betz, GVAC leader, who later helped the district choose the Harkins Slough Rd. site had grave concerns about safety issues at the Pinto Lake site located across from her home on Green Valley Rd.

She said her main concern was the danger to students posed by the presence of the Lake. She said she had witnessed a child drowning there and feared students might try to go swimming and meet a similar fate.

She downplayed concerns at the Harkins Slough Rd. site which she said was considerably dryer when the committee evaluated it. Even now, she said it would not be an attraction to students.

``It's marshy, gooey and sticky,'' she said. ``It's not a place the kids are going to mess around or rough-house in.''

The district's site selection committee that included Betz, and which evaluated and rated the sites proclaimed that there were ``No Safety Issues" at the Harkins Slough Rd. site.

That analysis was labeled as ``ridiculous'' by former E. A. Hall and Aptos High School teacher Sylvia Previtali. She maintains the slough and the associated peat bogs along with the site's proximity to the airport and pedestrian traffic on narrow country roads pose a serious threat to student safety.

``I think you'll have students pushing each other into the slough or into road,'' Previtali said. ``They'll use it as a challenge to prove their abilities. Kids have done that forever.''

Robert Curry, California State University Monterey Bay Watershed Institute Director said the danger the slough poses is overrated.

``It's just ordinary quick sand,'' he said. ``It looks solid but it becomes liquid when it gets shaken.''

He said a student could sink up to their waste but is not likely to get sucked under. On the other hand, heavy objects — those that are heavier than water, occasionally disappear in those peat bogs.

Sgt. Robert Tanner, Supervising Deputy Coroner for the County of Santa Cruz said a 17 year old youth, Antonio Corona, drowned in Struve Slough in 1995 while drinking beer and swimming with his family.

The potential for drowning is not the only safety concern being raised by those who question the district's desire to build a school at that site. The hazards presented by narrow country roads have been raised but for the most part have been dismissed.

A search of the California Highway Patrol's database of accidents and victims revealed that since 1994, there have been 14 traffic related accidents resulting in 11 injuries on the two miles of Harkins Slough Rd. and Lee Rd. west of Highway 1 and near the proposed high school.

One of those accident victims, 22 year-old Gabriel Ramirez-Sanchez was hit by a pick-up and killed while walking with friends along Lee Rd. around 11:45 a.m . Sunday, Sept. 18, 1994. The were reportedly rough-housing.

Increased focus on the site's proximity to the airport and related traffic patterns overhead have raised concern among some citizens. Meanwhile the district has scrambled to protect the Department of Transportation approval they received in 1992 and 1997 that permit the school to be built there.

Those evaluations were in conflict with a 1987 DOT evaluation and only looked at a small rectangle along Harkins Sough Rd — an area the Coastal Commission staff claim overlaps ESHA on Struve Slough to the east and Hanson Slough to the West. Their recommendation is to squeeze the proposed foot print to an area further north and away from ESHA on the site.

One problem the school district is struggling to address is the size of the area evaluated and approved in 1992 . Casey has acknowledged that even without the Coastal Commission modifications, not all of the school facilities will fit within that development rectangle.

According to Dan Gargas, state airport safety inspector, to build outside of the area evaluated would require a new evaluation. He declined to speculate whether a new evaluation would be favorable, but he did say it would be less subjective, and political influences would be removed.

The Coastal Commission, which has made safety an issue within their report to the commissioners, had the map used by Gargas in the 1992 aeronautics evaluation conformed by a staff cartographer to scaled architecturally drawings of the district's planned facilities found in the district's EIR. The resultant series of overlays shows the entire football stadium, some parking lots, most of the playing fields, and other facilities the district wants to build located outside the DOT evaluation envelope.

If the district is forced to comply with the Coastal Commission modifications, even more of the facilities will be located outside of the rectangle. Either way, a new evaluation of the site for student safety relative to the air traffic and flight patterns is almost certain.

Though safety issues have been brought forward and made a part of the staff's recommendations, very little attention in recent months has been paid to the commission's original concern — that the district should seriously consider alternative sites. The district has repeatedly denied the existence of alternatives, and will likely be called upon to defend that contention at the hearing on Thursday.

Not having feasible alternatives has been a requirement for the district to pursue the Harkins Slough Rd. site — the California Environmental Quality Act requires a less environmentally impacted option if one exists — and they were quick to adopted that position though they had to strain to eliminate several alternatives.

The site selection process concluded that there were three equally acceptable possibilities, Harkins Slough Rd., the Console property and Landmark-Lohr, now known as the Franceschi property. Console quickly became The Overlook Shopping Center, but the Franceschi parcel hasn't been developed.

The committee rated several other alternatives as less desirable options. Among them were the Kato and Koenig properties, both near the middle of the desired attendance area, close to residential developments on Calabasas Rd. and currently undeveloped. Five out of eight committee members rated both in the top three of sites overall, and the Kato property was rated second by Richard Meyer, the district's director of facilities construction at the time. Receiving lower ratings were the Crestview site off of Freedom Blvd. and the Pinto Lake site which didn't stand a chance after neighbors nixed it.

Within the Coastal Commission report are two additional sites the district had considered previously, Phillips Ranch off Green Valley Rd. at Dalton, and an Amesti Rd. site at E. Rialta Rd.

According to Gargas, new aeronautic evaluation criteria could find previously approved sites to be unsuitable and previously rejected sites to be suitable for a school. Don French, airport manager said a site previously evaluated adjacent to Calabasas Elementary was disapproved in 1992 but might be approved today.

Alianza Elementary, which was originally built as a high school and which is currently home to a bi-lingual emersion charter school has been considered for possible re-conversion to a high school. The charter school, with less stringent architectural requirements could be relocated elsewhere.

Though the district has already invested money in architectural drawings for the new site, those drawings could be adapted to an alternative site.

Had the district and the site selection committee known then what they know now, their ratings may have been different. The difficulties associated with widening Harkins Slough Rd., the Coastal Commission's insistence that a bridge be constructed over Struve Slough, and requirements that the school not be built on portions of Hanson Slough along with the high cost to put utilities under the freeway might have made the site less desirable had the reality of these problems been better known.

Many of the those problems were known and discussed long before the GVAC succeeded in convincing the school board to abandon the Pinto Lake site. And the desire to build a school there survived numerous setbacks and countless admonitions from local Coastal Commission staff members that do so would meet stiff opposition on Coastal Act grounds.

Richard Meyer, PVUSD Director of Facilities Construction wrote in a 1995 memo to Casey about lengthy, detailed, one-on-one meetings with Coastal Commission staff member Les Strnad in 1991 and 1992. Those discussions considered ways to make the Harkins Slough Rd. high school a reality even as his site selection committee was working to objectively evaluate that and seven other potential sites.

In June of 1993, the PVUSD school board gave the go ahead, voting in favor of the site and authorizing a required Environmental Impact Report. Five years later the EIR was certified.

That document may have raised more questions than it answered.

An agricultural viability study in the EIR performed by Andrew Mills of Santa Barbara concluded in all likelihood the site will fall out of agriculture use due to the rising cost of production and other factors within the ``not too distant future''.

Emidgio Martinez, the tenant farmer who leases the property has been growing strawberries there since 1990 and said he plans to continue if allowed to do so. He employs approximately 50 workers during periods of normal crop rotation when 35 acres would be in berries with 35 acres fallow. Since the future of his operation is now in jeopardy, he has almost all of his 70 acres planted.

Based on the Mills analysis and comments within the city's current Local Coastal Program, the EIR denied the existence of prime agricultural land at the site. The Coastal Commission, however, contradicts that finding and maintains the current agriculture use easily fits the commission's definition of prime agricultural land.

The extent of Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas present at the site is another issue where the EIR is in conflict with Coastal Commission staff findings. Last minute meetings and negotiations between the parties have focused on the presence or absence of these areas.

The city's application for amendment to their Local Coastal Program includes a map based on analysis by Huffman & Associates, experts hired by the district. That map shows a loss of wetlands at the site — most notably at the south west corner of the site — relative to what was present in the previously certified Local Coastal Program.

The local Coastal Commission staff insist historical records and current hydrology at the south west corner of the site indicate the presence of a finger of Hanson Slough. The Huffman & Associates experts argue that only a portion of that area is ESHA and filling it would have little impact on sensitive habitat.

So, some aspects of the controversial proposal are subject to the interpretation of experts, but some offer less leeway for interpretation.

The proposed site's location within the city limits has prompted proponents of the project to argue ``the property will be developed'' under existing regulations, and that it is zoned residential or light industrial. To further that notion, some argue that a school will be superior to the condominiums, industrial buildings or office complexes that could easily be built there.

However, under the city's current LCP, uses other than agriculture or passive recreation on that land would first require a finding that farming the land is not feasible — a high standard to overcome.

And according to John Doughty the city's Community Development Director, the land is zoned CZ, coastal zone, not residential or light industrial. He added that to his knowledge, there has never been a permit issued or an application submitted for developing anything on that property.

The case against the likelihood of residential or industrial development at the site, is supported by Hulberg & Associates of San Jose, the appraiser firm hired by the district to estimate the site's fair market value for eminent domain proceedings. They reported that non-agricultural use was economically impractical and altogether unlikely for the foreseeable future.

So, with a large turnout of Watsonville area residents expected at the Coastal Commission meeting Thursday at 9:00 a. m. at the Carmel Inn in Carmel, it is hoped that a decision will be made — once and for all — on the future of New Millennium High.

But with so many questions still remaining to be answered, and feelings running so strong in both directions, predictions on if and when construction will begin range from next year to never.

Long time school board trustee and respected community leader, Sharon Gray worries that the controversy could be with us for some time.

``This could take decades,'' she said.